The invention relates to a device for marking edges of shelves, and more particularly to a device for indicating prices, article numbers, or similar information on the edges of the shelves in department stores and storing premises.
As the commercial marking of goods to an increasing extent is made by using the so-called bar code which can be read electronically and thus facilitates the registration of the purchased goods in the cash register, the common price tag on the goods will be superfluous from a commercial point of view and thus can be dispensed with if this is permitted by the authorities concerned. Then, the marking on the edges of the shelves will be much more important, and for such marking there are used today practically without exception signs which comprise a holder with manually interchangeable figures or other characters. Price changes in the goods assortment, which may occur every day to a great extent as far as everyday commodities are concerned, include an extensive manual work for the shop staff in changing the several signs which, moreover, are disadvantageous, because it is not difficult for a person to change unauthorizedly the information on a sign, if he wishes to do so.
However, according to the periodical Supermarket No. 7-8/84, page 25, an electronic marking for the edges of shelves has been proposed recently, which eliminates the drawbacks of the xe2x80x9cmanualxe2x80x9d shelf edge marking. In that case a display having illuminated digital figures, is provided on the edge of the shelf and can be controlled from the shop computer such that a changed price will be shown immediately and without further manual steps by the display indicating the price of the article for which the price has been changed. The electronic shelf edge marking also permits that there is initiated in a shop a price test or selectively applied price activities during specific selected business hours. However, the electronic shelf edge marking proposed according to said periodical would require for the operation thereof an extensive wiring not least for the power supply of the displays.
Also the device of the invention has been developed for electronic shelf edge marking and comprises a display mounted to the shelf, and a control unit operatively connected to the display.
In order to make possible that the displays are mounted at an arbitrary position, i.e. on the edges of shelves which are disposed along a wall, as well as on the edges of independent shelves (nacelles) without the necessity of an extensive wiring to the individual displays, and also in order to make possible that the displays are controlled, i.e. that the information disclosed by the displays is changed by selective calls from a shop computer or from a portable control device by the transmission of signals via a wireless connection between the displays and the shop computer or control device, respectively, each display having its own call code, the device of the invention has obtained the characteristics appearing from claim 1.
Each independent operative unit of the kind included into the device of the invention can easily be miniaturized by using integrated circuits as far as the control unit included therein is concerned and also can be made very economic as to the power consumption thereof such that the display can be dimensioned practically only with consideration of the desired size of the display, because the rest of the electronic equipment can be made very small. The absence of wiring to the units means a great freedom when the units are to be located, which considerably facilitates the exposure of the goods assortment.